Henry Kravis, co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, on Friday pleaded with investors in his private equity firm’s listed Euronext fund to be patient after it reported a negative return for 2007 and took $259.4m of write-offs on investments.

KKR Private Equity Investors (KPE), which floated two years ago raising $5bn for KKR, wrote down its exposure to seven companies owned by the US private equity firm, including NXP, the Dutch semiconductor maker, and ProSiebenSat1, the German media group.